Sunday, April 14, 2013

Larson, Perry And The Palladium Of Rights

In the Old West if
a horse thief stole your mount, you either took matters into your own hands and
shot him, or you petitioned the law and had him hanged, both swift and certain
options.

Connecticut’s 1st
District U.S. Representative John Larson did not have available to him either
option when Governor Rick Perry of Texas sent out a tweet inviting Bristol gunmaker
PTR Industries to remove to Texas: “Hey PTR … Texas is still wide open for
business!! Come on down!” And so when the naked attempt to steal PTR, a maker
of a long rifle banned by Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and the General
Assembly, was brought to Mr. Larson’s attention, he did the best he could,
offering a stinging rebuke in the Bristol Press: “a typical Rick Perry move, void of
substance but high on politically charged verbiage.”

The possibility
that “Still Revolutionary Connecticut” might lose some of its gunmakers as a
result of having recently passed the most aggressive anti-gun legislation in
the nation also was addressed by Mr. Malloy. Following passage of Bill 1160 on
April 4, PRT Industries owner Josh Fiorini felt wings sprouting on his feet.
Mr. Fiorini told Channel 8 Eyewitness news, “We knew right after reading the
text that if it passed, we wouldn't have a choice” but to move out of “Still
Revolutionary Connecticut,” once called the “Provision State” because it had
supplied George Washington’s army with war material. Mr. Malloy was concerned,
he said, with the well-being of all Connecticut businesses and ventured a
willingness “to work with Connecticut gunmakers
to help them remain in the state and understand the new laws.”

In the meantime,
the museumization of gun manufacturing in “Still Revolutionary” Connecticut”
was well underway. Asked in an earlier interview whether he did not consider it
ironic that members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional
delegation were approving stiff laws affecting the production of guns at the
same time they were agitating in Congress for funds to make the Colt armory
complex a national park, Mr. Larson, with great agility, danced around the
question by pointing out that Colt industry was primarily responsible for
modern modes of production – the so called “armory system” or the “American
system of manufacturing” -- failing to mention that Colt also was responsible
for manufacturing “the gun that won the West.” Actually, there were two guns
that won the far West in the latter half of the 19th century: the
Colt Frontier Six Shooter Revolver and the Winchester Model 1873, both of which
carried the same caliber of ammunition; and the “armory system,” the
manufacture of weapons that contained interchangeable parts, predates
Connecticut native Eli Whitney, who began to produce weapons for the military
after his cotton gin factory was destroyed in a fire.

In an editorial
defending Mr. Larson and U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, joint sponsors of
National Park recognition for the Colt complex museum, the Hartford Courant
rushed to the defense of the two members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional
delegation. The two Congressmen, along with anti-NRA U.S. Senator Chris Murphy,
have been battling in Washington for a pallid version of Connecticut’s much
stronger gun legislation, which prohibits the sale in Connecticut of the AR15,
possibly the most popular long gun since Colt – not the museum, the industry – manufactured
“the gun that won the West.” And yet, here were Mr. Larson and Mr. Blumenthal
writing legislation beseeching the Congress to cough up money for a national
park that would celebrate the production of a whole arsenal of weaponry thought
to be at the time they were produced the most advanced guns of the day.

Was this not ironic?
No, the Courant editorial decreed. It was merely an “unfortunate coincidence —
but nothing more than that.” The world turns, things evolve, “the present is
not the past.”

At the time the
Bill of Rights was adopted, the most highly regarded lawyer of the day, Judge
St. George Tucker, then the Judge of the General Court of Virginia and later
appointed by President James Madison as U.S. District Judge for Virginia,
proclaimed the Second Amendment to be “the palladium of liberty” -- a right of defense upon which all the other
imprescriptible rights in the Bill of Rights depend.

This is what “the
American Blackstone” said about the Second Amendment at the time it was
proposed:

“This may be considered as the true
palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self-defense is the first law of
nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this
right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept
up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or
pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the
brink of destruction.”

In England at the time prior to the adoption
of the Second Amendment in the United States, St. George noted, the right to
bear arms was reserved to the moneyed interests through provisions in the law that
kept the lower orders in their proper places, unarmed and defenseless against
their tyrannical betters. The deprivation of the right of all to bear arms for
the purpose of thwarting the tyranny of aristocrats or home bread potentates
was achieved through hunting laws. Put on a bumper sticker, St. George’s view
on the palladium of rights might read” “Live armed or lose life and liberty.”

But times change, things evolve. Following
passage of the new gun restriction laws in Connecticut, some gun makers will
leave the state; others, the true heirs and assigns of Eli Whitney and Sam
Colt, regard the Connecticut’s version of England’s hunting laws – which leaves
all the high tech weaponry to criminals -- as a bar to be overcome by savvy gun
designers, not all of whom will move to Texas as the Second Amendment is put in
its proper place by social utopianists.

In the muck of all the political blather,
one longs for a St. George or -- better still – a fully armed Pallas Athena,
the goddess of wisdom and war-craft from whom the word “palladium” is derived.